Intel announces support for new Energy Star guidelines

Intel is staying on board the Energy Star bandwagon, announcing that they are …

Intel has announced its support for a new set of Energy Star guidelines, developed in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency, that are designed to reduce the cost of ownership of computers while simultaneously protecting the environment. The new guidelines are set to go into effect on July 20 of this year and replace an earlier set of guidelines that have been in effect since the year 2000. Intel says that it is already shipping microprocessors and other system components (such as motherboard chipsets and integrated graphics chips) that will help system builders qualify for the Energy Star logo.

The EPA's goal is to achieve 40 percent support for the Energy Star's power management guidelines nationally by 2010 and boost this to 60 percent by 2012 and 80 percent by 2014. Interestingly, the new revision of the Energy Star guidelines, version 4.0 (Tier 1), includes suggested settings for game consoles as well as computers. Devices not covered by the new guidelines include midrange and high-end servers, thin clients, and handheld devices such as PDAs.

The new 4.0 guidelines set up different categories for desktops and laptops depending on their relative computing power. For example, desktops with more than one CPU or core, 2GB of RAM, multiple hard drives or a TV tuner, and a GPU with more than 128MB of memory are considered Category C. Multicore desktops with only 1GB of RAM are considered Category B, and everything lower is Category A. Standby (less than 2W) and Sleep modes (less than 4W) are the same for all categories, but maximum power draws with the CPU idling are different: 50W for Category A, 65W for Category B, and 95W for Category C. Notebooks are divided into two categories based solely on their GPU.

There are additional requirements for being able to display the Energy Star logo: all computers must be shipped with the display's Sleep Mode configured to activate after 15 minutes of activity, and if they support WOL (Wake-up on LAN) modes, they must be configured to the EPA's specifications.

Energy Star was created in 1992 as a voluntary labeling program that manufacturers could take advantage of to promote energy-efficient products. Many people can recall first seeing the distinctive star-shaped Energy Star logo on computer monitors of that era. Intel received a special Energy Star award in 2001 for developing Instantly Available technology that lowered PC energy consumption by up to 71 percent and garnered another award in 2004 for improvements in power supply efficiency.

The next set of guidelines, Version 4.0 Tier 2, are scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2009, and will refine the categories to include systems with quad-core processors.